Jimmy Wayne arrives in Phoenix, vows to continue campaign

Click to see a gallery of photos from Jimmy Wayne's arrival in Phoenix on Aug. 1, 2010 at the end of his Meet Me Halfway campaign (this photo: Michael Ging/For The Tennessean).

Jimmy Wayne walked when the wind-chill factor was 15 degrees below zero, and snowflakes had crystallized and were blowing sideways. He was still walking months later when the sun was high in the desert sky, the thermometer commonly reading 112 degrees and rattlesnake sightings seeming to come every mile.

On his way from Nashville to Phoenix, someone stole Wayne’s suitcase filled with his spare change of clothes, others gave him food and strangers took him into their homes.

On Sunday, Aug. 1, Wayne finally reached his destination: HomeBase Youth Services. He finished after breaking his foot about four days ago while descending a mountain into Phoenix.

The singer, a former foster child and homeless teen, started the walk, dubbed Meet Me Halfway, on Jan. 1 at Nashville’s Monroe Harding Children’s Home. His goal was to walk halfway across the country to raise awareness of at-risk youth and teens that are in danger of aging out of the foster system without having the emotional or financial support they needed to prosper as adults.

“It’s been worth it, one step at a time,” Wayne said on Sunday after the walk was over. “It’s going to take this kind of action to raise awareness. There were a lot of people who showed up and walked down the street with me who didn’t know it was an issue. Awareness is the most important part of it. It has to be. There could not be a better answer than seeing someone respond to this walk by telling me (they adopted a teenager). And, it’s happened. That really, really moves me when I hear those stories.”

More than 300 supporters showed up at a Phoenix-area park to walk the last few feet with Wayne to his destination. A marching band played as Wayne completed his approximate 1,700-mile journey, and he choked up several times as he addressed the crowd.

But after Wayne signed the last autograph, the best word he could muster was “bittersweet.” He was disappointed that to his knowledge no church groups or state representatives showed up on a Sunday.

“You don’t have to wonder very much about why we are in the state that we’re in,” he said. “We are crying out to the people who could help us make the changes — the government. And you just feel disrespected when not one of them showed up to say, ‘We hear you loud and clear.’ The supporters showed up, but the people we’re crying out to didn’t acknowledge it.”

Wayne felt that way on Sunday, but he also saw concrete proof along the way that the walk made a difference in all the ways he had hoped.

Dreama Gentry, the coordinator for Wayne’s Meet Me Halfway campaign, watched the followers on his Twitter account grow. Wayne chronicled his walk on the social networking site, and his following grew from about 8,400 in late December to more than 17,500.

Of those people, Gentry knows of a family in Texas who now spends Sundays serving lunch at a shelter to serve as friendly faces for the people eating there. She said multiple families have been inspired to spend time with homeless teens and even more who are taking classes to become foster parents.

“There’s this group that are just changing what they do in their own homes,” said Gentry, who also directs outreach programs for at-risk young people in her home state of Kentucky. “People are starting to model what the Costners did for Jimmy. I’m amazed at what he has been able to accomplish in seven months as far as spreading awareness and creating opportunities for people to volunteer and disseminate information with no pre-planning.”

Debi Drake was one of those people. During the campaign, she earned her certification to be a foster parent in her home state of Minnesota.

“I checked around to see who most needed the help and it was Lutheran Social Services,” she said. “I had to go through three months of training, and as soon as I got through with my training, I’ve been doing what they call respite care.”

That means Drake is a kind of relief foster parent when foster parents in her area of Minnesota have a hard time or need a break.

“I’ve been taking kids for about the last two months that are struggling and having problems,” she said. “I have a farm with some fabulous horses that are like big puppies, and I’ve incorporated helping these foster kids with working with horses. I’m just one person that was extremely touched by Jimmy Wayne’s story and now there’s a whole network of people at my church who are involved with Meet Me Halfway and are trying to figure out how to help more. I feel like there’s some really big things that could come out of this.”

California State Assemblyman Jim Beall credits Wayne and his walk for what could be sweeping changes in the California foster care system.

Beall’s office contacted Wayne earlier this year and invited him to Sacramento to lobby state legislators on behalf of a piece of foster care legislation. If passed, it would among other things extend the length of time benefits are given to foster care children in California from age 18 to 21.

“Jimmy came here and … talked about his own personal experiences,” Beall said. “He talked to a lot of legislators who like country music, so he was able to really have an impact. He got a lot of votes for the legislation and the legislation is now in the state senate and it’s probably going to go to the governor next month for signature into law. I would say thousands of people are now aware of the issue and problems of these foster children. He’s made people aware and motivated people to do something about it.”

Wayne — who first found fame in the earlier part of the decade with songs like “Stay Gone” and “I Love You This Much” — feels like God has given him a public platform through his music career to make a difference.

“A lot of people say ‘I’m called, I’m called’ until they get money in their pocket and they get fame and then they’re never are called again,” Wayne said. “For me, I know why I’m in Nashville. I know what I’m supposed to be doing, and I’ve never once been confused. I knew exactly who my audience was, and I knew this is something I had to do. With my music, the songs I wanted out weren’t getting heard. And it was like if I’m going to do something to raise awareness, right now is the time to do it. I know my heart, and I know where I’m at in my head.”

Wayne returned to his performing during several points in the walk because of prior commitments. But even with breaks for shows, he said that as he looks back on the last seven months he has a hard time believing that guy who walked from Tennessee to Arizona is even him.

“It just seemed so surreal to me to see those pictures in my phone of me at Madison Square Garden or me on the Grand Ole Opry and in all those places I played that I saved so I could look at them and it just seemed so far away, like it was a different person,” he said. “I’m realizing that there are really good people out there, and the lesson to me is that you see how caught up you are when you get away from it. I can’t imagine spending another day in a gym past 20 minutes and being that consumed in how I look. As long as I’m eating good and being healthy, there’s a lot of things I wasted my time doing. It makes you appreciate things a lot more, like spending time with your family.”

Wayne returns to Nashville on Tuesday, and he said he couldn’t wait to write a few songs about his experience on the road. But he doesn’t want his music or the walk to overshadow the problem of youths aging out of the foster care system and becoming homeless.

Wayne said he will never walk across six states again but that the end of the walk does not mean the end of the campaign.

“I hope that people are more impressed with that and wanting to do something about it than they are about the walk,” he said. “I don’t want people to say, ‘Gosh, I can’t believe you walked across America.’ What I would like for them to say is, ‘Gosh, I can’t believe there are homeless kids in America.’”

Reach Cindy Watts at 615-664-2227 or ciwatts@tennessean.com. David Woodfill of The Arizona Republic contributed to this report.